HENRY JOE SAKALA

Yes, we have had all sorts of maids, from all sorts of places with all sorts of characteristics. Characteristics that would drive you mad. I’m telling you, there’s no way you can stay with one maid for more than three months. Something always goes wrong along the way. Some of them have worked for us for a day, some for hours, others for minutes. It’s a crazy profession populated by crazy people. The service they provide is needed but some of the people providing it don’t know this.

When you employ a maid, for her it’s like heaven on earth. She forgets about the work and starts relaxing and eating and stealing your food. She will use every chance she gets to practice that hopeless Bemba adage:

“U’ubomba mwi bala alya mwi bala.” (You monkey eating Bembas, how do you encourage thieving like this?).

Anyway back to the issue at hand – maids. They will steal your clothes, your shoes, your fake hair, your underwear, your make up, your husband and everything that you hold dear to your heart.

Allow me to just take you through the Top Four list of the 45 maids we have had so far. They all have been named according to their peculiar characteristics.

Number one, we had the Dull Maid… When my daughter was born, we had the need for a maid because my wife is a working woman and she needed to be at work two weeks after giving birth. So we left the baby with the maid and left strict instructions…

“Feed the baby the milk… make sure it’s not too warm and not too cold. Is that clear?”

“Very clear,” she reassured us.

Before leaving we left the tin of powdered milk and the feeding bottle on top of the deep freezer.

Later when my wife came back home to check up on her, she found the tin of baby milk still intact but the feeding bottle was full of milk.

Where has the milk come from? My wife wondered. She hoped and prayed that it was not milk from her breasts as she too had a baby. When my wife queried she was told that she had found the fresh milk in the fridge and that’s what she gave to the baby. Evil woman! My child had diarrhoea for the whole week! The next week, the Dull maid was fired.

Coming in at number two, is the Staring Maid. A strange young woman with big eyes and she knew how to use those eyes. This maid would stare at me all the time. She would even stare at my wife! When visitors are around and we’re busy chatting, she would stand at a distance and stare at me and the visitors. Each stare made me feel like little insects were crawling on my skin.

One day I was in the John doing my thing when I felt my skin move, I looked up and there she was at the door, staring at me. That was the last time she stared at me! She was fired instantly.

Number three: The Sunsha Bokosi Maid…. just by the name I’m sure you know what her most prized feature on her body was. Just in case you were born yesterday, what I’m saying here is that this maid had big bums. One step and they would vibrate like those of a Koffi Olomide dancing queen.

As the man of the house, I tried by all means to avoid looking at the bums but the stupid maid made sure that the bums were always in my view.

She would pretend to be cleaning a window in front of me and give me her backside view and she would really clean that window vigorously.

Shining of the floor was always done when I’m having breakfast at the dining table and the shining would always be done in front of me – vigorously. She was vigorously fired!

The Evil Maid takes up the number four spot. During her reign as the maid of the house of Cool, my daughter broke her arm and twisted her ankle. The evil woman was physically abusing my poor baby and denying it vehemently.

“She fell down while playing,” was the excuse given by the maid.

Before we hired her, my daughter weighed 10 Kg and she looked fresh and bright like the morning sun. Two weeks later, she weighed 1.5 Kg and looked like a malnourished baby from some poverty stricken country.

“This child doesn’t like eating!” The maid would say.

Her lies and her greed led to her downfall. One day my wife went home earlier than usual and found my little angel outside on a dirty reed mat crying like hell. The evil maid was inside the house, at the dining table, busy eating the baby porridge as she listened to some local classic entitled “Ukulya bwino kula letelela!” Need I say more? She was sent home with a few bruises on her face. The evil witch!

Maids. The problem is, in this day and age, we can’t do without them. I guess we just have to put up with their nonsense. However, try by all means to avoid the Top Four Crazy Maids!